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>io. )49 E„st n:,y Street, Cl.nrle.lo,,, 8„. C:,. 



C^;^HE name of Pickens is historical in South Caro- 
^^ lina. For three generations it has held promi- 
nent station in the roll of her public men. Andrew 
Pickens, the elder, was a worthy compeer of the 
great Whig chieftains of the revolution; and with 
the "Game Cock" Sumter, and the "Swamp Fox" 
Marion, composed that famous trio of the partisan 
leaders of the unpaid gentlemen of Carolina, whose 
fame will always live in " song and story," in the old 
Palmetto State, whatever complexion her destiny 
may assume. His conquest of the Cherokees, the 
wound in the breast which he received in the thick- 
est of the tio-ht at Eutaw, and his srallant services at 
the hard-fought battle of the Cowpens, for Avhich 
Congress voted him a sword, would be kept alive by 
tradition, even were they not indelibly impressed on 
the brightest pages of the Southern chapters of the 
history of that great struggle. He was a general in 
the war of the revolution, was subsequently elected 
to Congress, declined a re-election, and was after- 



wards solicited to accept the office of Governor of 
the State, which he also declined. 

His son, Andrew Pickens, the younger, was also 
distinguished, both in military and civil life. In the 
war of 1812, our second war of independence, as it 
has been not inaptly termed, he was Colonel of the 
10th Regiment United States Regulars, stationed on 
the Canada frontier, and was afterwards appointed to 
the command of one of the two regiments raised by 
the State for the defence of Charleston in 1814. Upon 
the return of peace, he was, in 1816, elected one of 
that long line of illustrious Governors of South 
Carolina — the choice of the white men of the State — 
which commenced in 1775 with John Rutledg-e. 

His son, Francis W. Pickens, more widely known 
than either sire or grandsire — more widely known, 
indeed, on the day of his death than any living Caro- 
linian, after high o'ffices held in times of feverish 
excitement, and a long and eventful public career 
passed amid the storms of State — has but lately 
breathed his last, at the family seat of Edgewood, 
amid the endearments of domestic life, and with 
children's faces around his bed, but leaving no heir 
male to transmit to after generations the name 
which has been so long and so much honored in 
South Carolina. 



3 

The last Pickens, tlioiigli his . services as Aid to 
Governor Hayne in the stormy days of nullification, 
and his course as Governor of South Carolina in the 
first two years of the great civil war in America, 
gave no uncertain promise that, as w^ere the sire and 
grandsire in military affairs, so would be the son, 
won his laurels in that civil arena for which he had 
evinced from boyhood a passionate proclivity. 

" Politics," says the last of the British premiers — a 
man who has ^^erhaps lived more in and for the 
world of politics than any living statesman — "politics 
is a branch of study certainly the most delightful in 
the world, l)ut for a boy as certainly the most perni- 
cious." Here we have followed the practice, rather 
than the theory, of Mr. D'Israeli ; the highest goal of 
honorable ambition is to acquire great renown by 
great public services, and ambitious youth naturally 
aspire to political distinction. 

Mr. Pickens' early education was well adapted to 
form an orator and statesman. He was an earnest 
student of Aristotle, the most acute of human intel- 
lects, whom he justly considered the most profound 
of all who have treated of government ; and through- 
out life was fond of tracing in modern authors, re- 
peated, varied, and disguised, those fundamental 



ideas of the science which the greatest of philoso- 
phers taught the greatest of conquerors. As in 
statesmanship his master was the founder of the 
science of politics, so in oratory his master was the 
greatest orator who ever spoke — 

" Whose resistless eloquence 
Wielded at will that fierce democratic, 
Shook the arsenal and fulmined over Greece." 

So attached indeed was he to Demosthenes, that 
he could repeat in youth the whole of the transcen- 
dent oration on the Crown, and would often, in later 
life, quote striking passages of it with unaffected 
admiration. 

Under the able tuition of his father, he studied and 
memorized Burke's great speeches on the taxation 
and conciliation of the colonies, Sheridan's famous 
Begum speech on the celebrated trial of Warren 
Hastings, and Lord Mansfield's ablest efforts in the 
House of Lords ; and to these and the other bravuras 
of British oratory he constantly recurred with the 
greatest pleasure. 

But his heart, like Legare's, was in the classics, and 
it might be truly said of him, in the beautiful lan- 
guage of a college friend, afterwards a congressional 






<r^ 




colleague and rival aspirant for liigli office, who liad 
tlie same tastes with himself, that he "drank deep 
and drank often of the precious waters of those 
virgin fountains which were unlocked in Nature's 
first known cycle." 

These studies, begun at home under the tuition and 
example of his father, were fostered and cultivated 
to the highest degree when he entered the South 
Carolina College,— long before and long afterward, 
the nursing mother of Southern statesmen and ora- 
tors,— no unwilling or laggard pupil, but " conspicu- 
ous among the youths of high promise who sat at 
the feet" of the great teacher who then enunciated, 
with consummate ability and singular force, doctrines 
of political economy and the philosophy of govern- 
ment which took deep root in South Carolina. 
Thomas Cooper's political life was one continued 
struo-de against all forms of political tyranny and 
centralization; and lectures which, commg Irom the 
masters of cloistered colleges, might have been con- 
sidered theoretical abstractions, became concrete re- 
alities, when life was breathed into them from the 
personal experience of the master "who had spoken 
history, acted history, lived history;" who had been 
prosecuted for his political course by the British 



6 



Crown and the administration of the ekler Adams; 
who had canvassed the most excitalde voters on 
earth in a contested race with Egallte Orleans for 'a 
seat in the convention during the carnival of the 
French revolution of 1789. And on no subject was 
Dr. Cooper's intellect more vigoi-ously exercised than 
on the fundamental principles involving the relation 
which the States bore to the Federal Government of 
the American Union, and which underlay the distinc- 
tion between that party which advocated a strong 
centralized national government, and that which ad''- 
vocated tlie sovereignty of tlie States~t\^ sovereignty 
of the States, now scarce mentioned save in derision, 
except as we hear of it, after the ground swell of the' 
great struggle of arms, in the exhaustive argument of 
Alexander Stephens, or a brief, vigorous letter from 
Barnwell Rhett, reminding us of the spirit and the 
days when calida juventa he wrote the Colleton ad- 
dress. Mr. Pickens' position on these great questions, 
and in the great struggle, first of opinions and then of 
arms to which they led, was taken then, early in life, 
while a college boy; and thenceforward, to the day of 
his death, he never swerved or wavered from that 
position; and though its armed adherents went to the 
wall, and its flag went down on the red field of bat- 
tle, 



" With not a man to wave it, 
And not a sword to save it," 

though what he had regarded as sovereign States, 
among them his beloved Carolina, were given as 
provinces to pro-consuls, and the dire result of arms 
proclaimed that he and his great compeers would be 
portrayed in the colors of " The Gracchi of the Patri- 
cians, and not the Gracchi of the people," he ever 
maintained the same position, through evil as well as 
good report, and denied to the last, as the great 
heroic mind ever has done and ever will do, " that 
might makes right." 

To him the abandonment of the doctrines and 
dogmas of the States Eights strict construction party 
would have been worse than political apostacy — it 
would have been sacrilege, for to him the sovereignty 
of the States was not an abstraction or a theory — it 
was a creed, a religion. So early and so deeply was 
he imbued with the principles of the States Rights par- 
ty, that while in college he wrote seven articles under 
the signature of "Sydney" for the Charleston 
Mercury, then under the editorial auspices of the 
gifted Henry L. Pinckney. These articles took the 
highest ground, asserted the separate -sovereignty of 
the States, their right in theii* sovereign capacity to 



nullify an unconstitutional act of Congress, to relieve 
tlieir citizens from its operation, and to open tlieir 
ports in defiance of the restrictions of an unconstitu- 
tional and oppressive tariff. They excited the great- 
est interest, and their authorship was ascribed by the 
National Intelligencer of that day to a committee 
of -distinguished Carolinians, supposed to consist of 
Hayne, McDuffie, and Hamilton. 

He was admitted to the Bar iu 1828, and was elect- 
ed to the Lower House of the South Carolina Legis- 
lature in 1832, where his speeches elicited the waj-ni- 
est encomiums (despite their differences on the 
exciting topics discussed) from Hugh S. Legare, then 
Minister in Brussels; his first speech being made at 
the request of Wm. C. Preston, on the latter's resolu- 
tions responsive to Jackson's famous proclamation on 
the Nullification imbroglio. He soon became chair- 
man of the Committee on Federal Relations, and of 
the Committee on the Judiciary ; and in the former 
capacity made the well known report on the oath to 
be prescribed to ofiicers, a subject which gave rise to 
so much excitement, politically and judicially. 

Li 1834, when twenty-six years of age, he was 
elected to Congress, as successor of Mr. McDufiie 
without opposition, and at once took high rank from 



a speech lie delivered on our relations with France. 
A lady of wit and fashion at the Capital, who had 
been accustomed to hear his predecessor and the other 
great orators from his State, Init who now^ heard Mr. 
Pickens for the first time, at the conclusion of his 
maiden speech in Congress, asked " if it were really 
true, that orators grew spontaneous in South Carolina." 
He and Governor Hammond, then also a member 
of the House of Eepresentatives, by concert, objected 
to the reception of abolition petitions, which the 
House had been receiving and referring to the Com- 
mittee on the District of Columbia, and in January, 
1836, he delivered, on Governor Wise's resolution on 
that subject, one of the first arguments ever made in 
Congress against the constitutional power of the gov- 
ernment to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, 
and forcildy portrayed the power of the abolitionists 
amid conflicting political parties, and the causes which 
would inevitably increase that })ower, and demon- 
strated that from holding the balance of power they 
would finally control the destinies of the government. 
"It is of no avail," said he "to close our eyes to pass- 
ing events around us in this country and in Europe. 
Everything proclaims that, sooner or later, we shall 
have to meet the strong and the powerful, and contend 



10 

over the tomljs of onr fathers for our consecrated 
hearthstones and household gods, or abandon our 
country to become a bhack colony, and seek for our- 
selves a refuge in the wilderness of the West. It is 
in vain to avoid the contest." How significant are 
these predictions of 1836, when read by the light of 
the Presidential canvass of 1860, and the lurid glare 
of all that has followed in its wake ! 

His speech on the Fortification bill, in May, 1836, 
attracted much attention from the vigorous exposition 
of the real nature of the changes going on in the 
government, which he contended were virtual altera- 
tions of the nature of the government itself. At this 
day it has a high additional value from its predictions, 
since realized, as to the changes which would be 
produced in naval warfare by the application of steam 
power. During the same year he was among the first 
who advocated the independence of Texas, in opposi- 
tion to the views expressed by Governor McDuffie, 
and others of the dominant party in South Carolina 
and elsewhere; and, in 1837, made one of the first 
speeches in Congress in favor of the independent 
treasury scheme. 

A series of speeches delivered by him from this 
time to 1811, on the relation of the government C^ 



11 

banks and the l)anking system, and on the subject of 
exchanges, excited wide-spread comment and admira- 
tion in the great commercial and financial centres of 
the Union, and may be read at this day with pleasure 
and profit. The report made l)y him as chairman of 
the Committee on Foreign Kelations, in 1840, on the 
burning of the steamboat Caroline, and the demand 
made by the British Minister for McLeod, exhibited 
his views of our foreign relations, and created a sensa- 
tion Ijoth here and in England. 

He continued in Congress an active participant in 
all leading deljates, till the 4tli March, 1848, when he 
was elected to fill the unexpired term of Major Jeter 
in the State Senate. 

ye was a member of the State Convention of 1852, 
and drew" its ordinance affirmino- the rio-ht of secession, 
reported by a committee composed of Chancellor 
Wardlaw, RoTjert W. Barnw^ell, and himself. 

On the election of Mr. Buchanan to the Presidency, 

he accepted the mission to St. Petersburg, having 

previously declined the mission to France, tendered 

him by President Tyler, and the mission to England, 

tendered him by President Polk. During his residence 

as American Minister in St. Petersburg, he jealously 

guarded the honor and dignity of his country, and 
L.of C. 



12 

vigilantly watched its interests, so far as these came 
or could come within the scope of his duties or powers, 
and the legation was the seat of an elegant hospitality, 
emhellished hy all that female grace and ingenuity 
could devise to remind American visitors to the ice- 
hound capital of all the Russias of the delights of 
our own more temperate clime. 

But his heart, amid all the ostentation and gaiety 
of diplomatic life, was with his home and people in 
the sunny South ; and the John Brown raid, the dis- 
ruption of the Democratic party under the bold lead 
of Yancey, in which party Mr. Pickens had long 
thought was the last hope of a Constitutional Union, 
and the incrasing excitement of domestic politics, 
admonished all who believed with him that tl^ir 
])rimary allegiance was due to their State and not to 
the Federal Government,' that the prologue which 
had lasted for thirty years was hastening rapidly to its 
close; that the black curtain which had shut down 
like a pall between the seer-like eyes of Calhoun and 
the future was about to be raised upon the first scene 
of the grand drama whose denouement no mortal 
could foretell ; that the conflict of opinions which had 
descended from Jeiferson and Hamilton to Calhoun 
and Webster, to Pickens and Fessenden, was now 



18 

"being debated for the last time as a conflict of opinion 
between Wigfall and Johnson ; and that beyond the 
Atlantic was no place for •mrptn^ whose solemn duty 
and high privilege it was to be where, if other conflict 
succeeded the conflict of opinion, they could meet their 
enemy at the gate-w-Hie resigned his position as Minis- 
ter to Russia, came to Washington, settled his accounts 
with the department, and reached Carolina amid the 
excitement which prevailed in November, 1860. 

The times were darkening, and events, more 
unmistakal)le than the fitful beating of the public 
pulse, proclaimed in tones too audible to be misunder- 
stood, that those who had just been chosen by the 
people of Carolina to select a fit occupant for the 
Executive chair, were called upon to make that 
selection under circumstances more momentous, and 
at a time more big with fate than had ever fallen to 
the lot of the representatives of the people. Names 
of good men and true, of civil and military fame, of 
national as well as State reputation, were presented, 
but the loud voice of popular acclaim, on the 16th <^t^ 
December, 1860, four days before the State formally 
sundered the bonds which bound her to the American 
Union, wafted the returned minister from Russia into 
that high office which then required for the discharge 



14 

of its lierculeaii duties and responsibilities faculties 
not second to tliose which, in times almost as dark and 
perilous, had vindicated the claims of John Rutledge 
and Robert Y. Hayne to the same exalted position. 
How the solemn trust confided to him was executed 
— how wisely — how firmly — how dauntlessly — with 
what ceaseless vio;ilance for the honor and interests 
of the grand old Commonwealth — with what earnest 
desire for peace — with what vigorous preparation for 
war — with what nerve, when honor called for the 
decisive shot at the " Star of the West" — ^vitli what 
fidelity to the sister States who had allied their 
fortunes, for better or worse, with South Carolina, 
who, singledianded and alone, in defence of her 
princij)les, had stepped into the fearful arena — is it. 
not written in the record of the eventful two years 
during which he held the helm of the State of South 
Carolina? That record can never perish ! And what- 
ever may be the fate of South Carolina, the name of 
Francis Wilkinson Pickens will l^e forever and aye 
entwined with the decisive initiatory steps which she 
took in armed defence of those principles of free 
government and theories of States rights, for which 
he had contended with unswerving fidelity from youth 
to aire ; for it was his fortune as her Executive chief 



15 

to illustrate in action lier opinions and creed, at a time 
and under circumstances which can never be forgotten. 
The views which Governor Pickens pressed upon the 
Confederate Government as to the management of its 
foreign relations, differing so widely from those which 
the Richmond Cabinet adopted, have not been and 
perhaps never will be published. Suffice it to say- 
that his views were based upon an attentive study of 
our diplomatic history; upon the actual condition of 
the foreiocn relations of the United States then 
existing; upon his personal knowledge of the policy 
of the different powers, partially fore-shadowed by 
the corps of able ambassadors ever present at the 
Russian Court, almost the headquarters of the diplo- 
macy of civilization, and upon his profound and 
enlightened conviction that neither formal recognition 
nor moral aid could be relied on at an early period of 
the gigantic struggle between the States from the 
great powers, whose favorable action w^as so confi- 
dently expected by the Confederate Executive and 
the peoj)le of the South. In his opinion, no considera- 
tions based on the diminished supply of that mighty 
plant "which keeps steam expanding, machinery in 
motion, and the lightning traversing the wires," or 
any other material interest likely to be seriously 



16 

affected by tlie war between the States, would he 
found sufficiently potent, in the brief time so general- 
ly supposed, to induce the English or French Cal)inet 
to interfere for the repression of the assaults made by 
the spirit of the age upon the Chinese wall maintained 
by the South against the public opinion of the civil- 
ized world, the Areopagus of modern times. He 
thouo-ht that a wise direction of the Foreio-n relations 
of the Confederate Government would rather seek to 
interest in its favor those great nations whom a 
similarity of institutions might admonish that their 
interests and fate, in that regard, were, to a certain 
extent, bound up with the South. But Dlis aliter 
visum, and when long afterward views somewhat 
similar to those of Governor Pickens were presented 
to the Spanish Secretary of Foreign Affairs, it was 
too late. Mr. Seward had anticipated the Richmond 
Cabinet. During the administration of Governor 
Pickens there arose an excited controversy growing 
out of the continued existence of the convention, the 
Executive Council and its acts, involving questions as 
to the nature of sovereignty, the power of the Legis- 
latures calling conventions of the people, and the 
power of those conventions when called and in exist- 
ence, which had been discussed in the Nullification 



17 

Conv^ention and the Legislatures of that day, about 
which the doctors of the States Rights party had then 
differed, which had not been definitely settled, and 
which now, in the midst of a raging war, awoke and 
stirred themselves from their Daedal couch. Argu- 
ments in favor of the legality of the Council and its 
acts were ably and elaborately presented by its advo- 
cates, and Governor Pickens ably, tirmly, and zealous- 
ly defended his views of the Executiv^e prerogative, 
and the constitutional partition of powers between 
the different departments of the government. The 
voice of the people, as evinced in the fall elections of 
1862, and the acts of the Legisture then elected, was 
averse to what they regarded as an ^^ imperiuni in 
imperioy But the action of the convention, provid- 
ing for the dissolution of itself and the council, soon 
withdrew the question from the domain of practical 
to that of speculative politics, and all excitement on 
the subject ceased. As a practical cpiestion, it seems 
not probable that it will speedily be resurrected again ; 
as a speculative question " suh judlce lis ^s^," and is 
likely so to remain. 

Y Grovernor Pickens, at the expiration of his term of 
office, retired to private life, after two years of excite- 
ment which would have tried nerves of iron. From 
3 



18 

tliis retirement lie emerged but once again into public 
view as a member of tlie Convention of 1865, called 
l>y Provisional Governor Pei'ry, under President John- 
son's reconstruction programme^} He took a prominent 
part in the debates on some of the leading provisions 
of the constitution then adopted, and consistent and 
logical in his States Rights theories and principles to 
the last, moved and carried an ordinance for the re- 
peal of the Secession ordinance of 1860 — the repeal 
affirming the past validity of that which is re2:)ealed. 

After his retirement, he returned, with the hearti- 
ness of a boy let free from school, to agricultural 
pursuits, the favorite occupation of the Carolina gen- 
tleman, for which he ever had a passion, but from 
which the toils of public life had long debarred him, 
and he enjoyed to the last (what many who have 
held high public station have not been so fortunate as 
to possess), the esteem, respect, and affection of his 
neio-hliors, and unbounded popularity among the 
people of his own district ; a popularity based upon 
their regard as well for his pure character and moral 
worth, as his intellectual endowments; for though 
ever courteous and aifable, he contemned the fawning 
arts which sometimes avail demagogues on the hus- 
tings and in popular canvasses, and with high and 



19- 

low " lie hore, without abuse, the grand old name of 
gentleman.'''' 

Edgewood, after the long absence of its master, was 
again thro^v^l open, and l)ecame, as in former days, the 
abode of elegance, refinement, and hospitality ; the 
resort of wit, beauty, and talent; and, even after its 
master's fortunes were shattered by the disastrous 
crash with which the Confederate Government and 
the property of the S( uth fell, it was still to ^te vis- 
itors what it ever had })een — what Holland House w^as 
to the Whig coterie — the most delightful of houses. 
The serpentine avenues and the pleasant grounds, the 
house over whose doors might have been inscribed, as 
over Earl Cowper's, " tuum <^.s'/," the library, the paint- 
ings, the Avorks of art, still remain. 

The graceful and accomjdished mistress who pre- 
sided over all this lovely scene, and whose smile was 
\vont in liap})ier days to light up as with magic the 
long galleries and dusky corridors, still remains — 
chastened, and in her widow's weeds. But the cor- 
dial grasp of the hand with Avhicli the master of the 
house greeted his guest, his genial Avelcome which 
combined courtly hos})itality ^vitli rural al)andon, his 
"kindness far more admiral>le than m-ace," which mit 
the huml)lest visitor at his ease — these are no lono;er 



•20 

there ; for that master to whom tliese ])eh)nged, after 
a long and lingering illness, cheered by all the con- 
solations of the Christian religion, slee])s quietly in 
the village churchyard. He has left " no son of his 
succeeding" to perpetuate his name, but he has left 
contributions to debates on great occasions, sj)eeches 
on vital subjects, striking addresses, and important 
messages, the collection and publication of which 
would be his fittest memorial. It is due to history, 
to the State, and to him. And independent of what 
editors, biographers, and collectors may do for his 
future fame, he has left much which is indissolubly 
entwined with the most exciting passages in the his- 
tory of South Carolina. And what can never be 
forgotten, 

" To her young sons, the model of a life 
Mild in its calm, majestic in its strife; 
To her rich history, blocks of purest ore — 
To her grand blazon, one proud quartering more." 











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